"I want to reassure our community that this news story was created based on an employee mistakenly sending notes from a brainstorming session," Cabrera said during a news conference. "There are no plans in place to close schools. We were exploring all options new and old that have and might have been reviewed."

Cabrera's response came one day after an internal district email was made public when it was sent to Channel 14-KFOX. Officials said the email was sent by mistake. The email was originally intended for the superintendent.

"In the email, there was another topic being discussed about the Chihuahuas and Jefferson and someone was working on their iPhone and they cut and paste the text that was sent to me," Cabrera said.

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Within the email, district administrators exchanged notes about the possibility of combining Bowie and Jefferson high schools, closing Schuster and Zavala elementary schools for use as maintenance offices, moving the central office to the Northeast by Cohen stadium, instead of Downtown, and rebuilding portions of Irvin High School as part of a bond reallocation that would include the demolition of Crosby Elementary.

Some of the notes were exploring cost saving measures for the district.

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Alex Hinojosa

The district is having to deal with several issues, including a $9 million shortfall because of enrollment declines, increases in health care costs, the reallocation of bond funds, the maintenance of aging schools, and the need to build a new STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) academy where Crosby Elementary school is located, and rebuilding portions of Irvin.

In addition, the district is in the process of finding a new permanent location for its central administrative offices after the city of El Paso did not extend its lease for the land at 6531 Boeing. The district's lease is expected to end in 2019.

Cabrera added that the notes were taken during an informal lunch discussion between himself, the district's Public Information Officer Renee De Santos and Associate Superintendent of Operations Hector Martinez.

When the email was mistakenly sent to the news media, district officials asked news outlets to not move forward with the story, with the promise that Cabrera would speak with them.

Cabrera said he changed his mind about meeting with news outlets Wednesday. Instead, the district sent out a news release Thursday explaining that the details of the email were part of brainstorming sessions to explore cost-saving options.

"I changed my mind because as I thought about it more and more, I thought it wasn't fair to print a story that was a brainstorming session," Cabrera said. "I thought it was unprofessional to do a story based on brainstorming notes."

Cabrera then said that if Bowie and Jefferson were to be consolidated, it would be done to provide the South Side a school with the potential for resources — not for cost saving measures — as the news release sent to the media had stated.

"That was a mistake," Cabrera said of the cost-savings news release. "That's what's important about clarifying this today. The email was taken out of context."

On Friday, officials gave the media a copy of the news release, but it did not include three paragraphs that included a quote from Cabrera and said that the email was inadvertently sent to KFOX. Late Friday, officials said the release was shortened to fit on one page and focus on the issues.

Norma De La Rosa, president of the El Paso Teachers Association, said there have been informal talks about consolidating Bowie and Jefferson high schools as far back as the 1950s.

"People will tell you that's been a move by the district to minimize, to do away with Bowie or Jefferson and try to consolidate them with one school," De La Rosa said. "But nothing formal — a lot of it has been basically rumors. We know enrollment has dropped in EPISD, but I think that using the fact that the enrollment has dropped at EPISD and the fact that we are losing funding tied to enrollment figures, and hooking that with consolidating Bowie and Jeff because their numbers are low, is a false perception."

De La Rosa added that enrollment figures fluctuate from year to year across the district, with a loss of enrollment at El Paso, Austin and Irvin high schools as well.

"I think that they need to look at a lot of other figures before they decide these are the two schools we want to consolidate," De La Rosa said. "I'm hoping that Mr. Cabrera will follow through and make sure that this is not a top-down decision, that the community is involved and that what the community wants is taken to heart — after all it is their taxpayer money."

Cabrera reiterated that the ideas were discussed over lunch and had not been presented to the Board of Managers because they were not fully formed yet.

"We have to look at all the numbers, and all the true benefits," Cabrera said. "We want to research what other districts have done, and do some comparative analysis."

Gathering more data to fully formulate the ideas may come within the next 30 to 60 days, and any implementation may not come until the 2015-16 school year, if at all.

He admitted that while the ideas are primitive and not up for discussion yet, there had been some informal discussions with members of the South Side communities about forming one South Side high school.

"I had asked several South Side community members to informally ask their friends and neighbors if this might be of interest," Cabrera said. "It will not be explored further if there is no community support."